Hello! How are we all? Well, this is the start of my third week in Brazil, so I am more than half way through the trip now. It is scary how fast time flies sometimes, and at other times it feels like my watch has stopped. The weekend was good. I have already told you all about Saturday, and yesterday was a pretty relaxed day.
I slept until 10.30am, which was amazing, and I only woke up because I heard knocking on my door. It turned out to be Manuel (the slightly sour guy from the Pousada), who wanted to know if I wished to swap rooms and move into room 5. After considering it for a while (it has a TV and a desk or something), I thought no, because it used to be Cristin´s room, and she barely slept for all the noise. Thus, I am staying put. Having missed breakfast, I went out to get something to eat, and then met up with Damaris at Campo Grande, from where we went to Barra and met Isabelle. The three of us went to the praia for the afternoon. I am not a beach person really. I don´t mind relaxing on them for a while, but I can´t do it too often or for too long because I just get bored. Anyway, it was a nice afternoon, and at about 4pm the tide came in rather high, so we left to get something to eat. We went to a restaurant on the beach front, and I had such an amazing meal. It was peixe grelhado com frutas, and boy was it good. The fish was yummy and fresh, and the fruit was enough to feed a family for a day! It included two slices of pineapple, a whole papaya, mango, a banana and two types of (sliced) melon. Yum yum. I would not have thought fish and fruit would go well together, but it was really good. I might never eat batatas fritas again!
At 6pm, the Copa America final started, and we stayed in the restaurant to watch the first half. Brazil scored a goal very early on, and by the end it was 2-0. Given that most Brazilians thought that Argentina was the stronger team, people were in a quite jubilant mood. We left that place and took a taxi to a Mexican restaurant near Rua Belo Horizonte, where we always seem to end up. The atmosphere in this place was much nicer, and the food looked really yummy, so we will have to go back for dinner some time. The second half was interesting, with Brazil scoring again, and soon after, it looked like Argentina scored a goal, but there must have been some technical football ruling to disqualify the goal or something, because Brazil won 3-0. Everyone celebrated, and some fireworks went off outside at the end. But soon after, lots of people left to go elsewhere, and the all night partying we had expected did not appear. Perhaps Brazil has won so many times in so many championships that they don´t get excited by it anymore! Steve turned up at the bar after the game had ended, and he was disappointed he missed the whole thing! Anyway, we left at about 10pm, and took at taxi home.
The taxi driver has now driven me home 3 times, and we have a little chit-chat each time. He wants to learn English and wanted me to be his teacher. So, we went to Bahia Cafe and I went through some useful English phrases that he might need as a taxi driver, and he asked me questions in Portuguese which I had to translate into English for him. It was quite a good learning exercise. I asked him what the cost of a trip to the airport is roughly, and he said R$70, which is quite a lot. I asked him what he would charge me, and he said zero, and he didn´t charge me for the fare that night either, so I was pretty chuffed! It´s good to bargain! Damaris had joked with him earlier that a lesson would cost R$100, and he seemed pretty willing to pay that, but I couldn´t possibly accept that. A free taxi ride to the airport is enough for me!
Today we have a new teacher at the school, because the school likes to rotate teachers around. This is a good idea, so you don´t get used to a particular accent or voice. Our new teacher is Marcelo, but the problem is, we now have 4 extra people (guys) in our class. Plus, they are either Italian or Spanish speaking, and so for them, Portuguese is much easier to grasp. So today, in true masculine style, they totally took over the class and dominated the lesson. And they speak so quickly that when we are asked as a group to repeat a phrase, they complete it before the rest of us have even started. Perhaps it will help us to learn, because we are now always on our toes. But, the class feels a little too big and too advanced at the moment. I wonder why they don´t put the latin-language speaking people in a class together, away from us Germanic language speakers?
I slept until 10.30am, which was amazing, and I only woke up because I heard knocking on my door. It turned out to be Manuel (the slightly sour guy from the Pousada), who wanted to know if I wished to swap rooms and move into room 5. After considering it for a while (it has a TV and a desk or something), I thought no, because it used to be Cristin´s room, and she barely slept for all the noise. Thus, I am staying put. Having missed breakfast, I went out to get something to eat, and then met up with Damaris at Campo Grande, from where we went to Barra and met Isabelle. The three of us went to the praia for the afternoon. I am not a beach person really. I don´t mind relaxing on them for a while, but I can´t do it too often or for too long because I just get bored. Anyway, it was a nice afternoon, and at about 4pm the tide came in rather high, so we left to get something to eat. We went to a restaurant on the beach front, and I had such an amazing meal. It was peixe grelhado com frutas, and boy was it good. The fish was yummy and fresh, and the fruit was enough to feed a family for a day! It included two slices of pineapple, a whole papaya, mango, a banana and two types of (sliced) melon. Yum yum. I would not have thought fish and fruit would go well together, but it was really good. I might never eat batatas fritas again!
At 6pm, the Copa America final started, and we stayed in the restaurant to watch the first half. Brazil scored a goal very early on, and by the end it was 2-0. Given that most Brazilians thought that Argentina was the stronger team, people were in a quite jubilant mood. We left that place and took a taxi to a Mexican restaurant near Rua Belo Horizonte, where we always seem to end up. The atmosphere in this place was much nicer, and the food looked really yummy, so we will have to go back for dinner some time. The second half was interesting, with Brazil scoring again, and soon after, it looked like Argentina scored a goal, but there must have been some technical football ruling to disqualify the goal or something, because Brazil won 3-0. Everyone celebrated, and some fireworks went off outside at the end. But soon after, lots of people left to go elsewhere, and the all night partying we had expected did not appear. Perhaps Brazil has won so many times in so many championships that they don´t get excited by it anymore! Steve turned up at the bar after the game had ended, and he was disappointed he missed the whole thing! Anyway, we left at about 10pm, and took at taxi home.
The taxi driver has now driven me home 3 times, and we have a little chit-chat each time. He wants to learn English and wanted me to be his teacher. So, we went to Bahia Cafe and I went through some useful English phrases that he might need as a taxi driver, and he asked me questions in Portuguese which I had to translate into English for him. It was quite a good learning exercise. I asked him what the cost of a trip to the airport is roughly, and he said R$70, which is quite a lot. I asked him what he would charge me, and he said zero, and he didn´t charge me for the fare that night either, so I was pretty chuffed! It´s good to bargain! Damaris had joked with him earlier that a lesson would cost R$100, and he seemed pretty willing to pay that, but I couldn´t possibly accept that. A free taxi ride to the airport is enough for me!
Today we have a new teacher at the school, because the school likes to rotate teachers around. This is a good idea, so you don´t get used to a particular accent or voice. Our new teacher is Marcelo, but the problem is, we now have 4 extra people (guys) in our class. Plus, they are either Italian or Spanish speaking, and so for them, Portuguese is much easier to grasp. So today, in true masculine style, they totally took over the class and dominated the lesson. And they speak so quickly that when we are asked as a group to repeat a phrase, they complete it before the rest of us have even started. Perhaps it will help us to learn, because we are now always on our toes. But, the class feels a little too big and too advanced at the moment. I wonder why they don´t put the latin-language speaking people in a class together, away from us Germanic language speakers?
